Review by Frank Plowright
The Thirteenth Floor was an inventive strip from Alan Grant, John Wagner and José Ortiz running throughout the 1980s, concerning a tower block supercomputer that developed into an independent intelligence, named after the floor Max occupied. In the manner of old 1950s horror stories, it dispensed its own form of justice to those threatening the building tenants, and the original stories are reprinted over three volumes, which is why these 21st century stories are Vol. 4.
Guy Adams updates the premise to involve mobile phones and magnetic locks, and because he’s writing for readers who’ve grown up since the 1980s he can have those terrorised by Max be worse than bullies. Police officer Hester Benedict’s story is particularly dark. For all that, Adams starts with bullying, just of a more modern type, with schoolkids filming beatings and circulating them online. Potential victim Sam Bowers is a Maxwell Towers resident, and reactivates Max after years of dormancy. The area’s deteriorated considerably since both Max and his building were new.
John Stokes draws the connecting sequences of Sam luring people to Max’s 13th floor, while other artists illustrate the sequences of them meeting their deserved fate. Were it not for a few intrusions of current technology Stokes could have drawn his black and white pages in the 1980s. They’re functional, but a world away from the exquisite art Stokes provided for Marney the Fox, yet occasional flashes such as the sample page show the work of a thoughtful artist. That means it’s left to the assortment of artists only drawing a few pages at a time to supply the wonder. They do, from the brittle digital splendour of Frazer Irving via the shadows of Kelley Jones to the comedic wonder of Tom Paterson, but it’s in service of an increasingly disjointed redemption arc with adult levels of horror. A single wordless chapter nicely drawn by new discovery Andreas Butzbach and written by Keith Richardson completes the new material.
The volume is padded out with an old reprint story very nicely drawn by Ortiz, and designed to feature classic film horrors by the unknown writer whose script doesn’t match the art.
There’s fun to be had here, and certainly a mainline injection of nostalgia, but it’s the artists that impress more than the story.
